


Falling For You

by wiski



Series: The Pros and Cons of Public Transportation [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Failwolf Friday, Flirting, M/M, Public Transportation, Ridiculous
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-04
Updated: 2013-03-04
Packaged: 2017-12-04 07:19:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/708051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wiski/pseuds/wiski
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek has a terrible, no good, very bad morning and nearly misses his bus. Stiles saves his ass. (Again.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Derek’s Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Morning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CrayolaDinosaurs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrayolaDinosaurs/gifts).



> This is a sequel to [Camaro Blues](http://archiveofourown.org/works/664916).
> 
> CrayolaDinosaurs asked for more bus shenanigans (and even offered an arm in exchange!), which planted a nest of plotbunnies in my head, and this is the result.
> 
> Sorry about the silly title. I'm awful at puns, I know.

Derek’s Friday starts off with a bang. Well,  _multiple_  bangs, if you want to get technical. The sporadic yet persistent clattering of metal against metal gradually filters into his consciousness until he’s half awake, but he doesn’t snap into full wakefulness until one particularly loud clang. His jolt of surprise sets off a brief tussle with his messy nest of bed sheets, which ends in an undignified tumble to the floor, barely cushioned by his sheets and a pillow.

By the time he manages to untangle his limbs and crawl on all fours over to where he unceremoniously tossed his clothes by his closet door the night before, his brain has recovered enough of its normal functions (bashing your head against the floor is apparently good for your head, who knew?) for it to register that the clanging is coming from the kitchen. The kitchen, where there are pots and pans and food and  _fire_ , _oh God_ , so many ingredients for disaster, all at the mercy of his sister. He’s starting to get flashbacks of terrible childhood memories of being force-fed various concoctions which could probably have been classified as biohazards.

So Laura has decided to exercise her “legendary” cooking skills today.  _Great_.

“Don’t do anything stupid! …Or try not to blow anything up, at least?” he calls toward the general direction of the kitchen, voice scratchy with sleep, but the only response he gets is a series of pointed metallic thumps.

With a sigh and a grunt of effort, Derek pushes himself to his knees and then reaches for the pile of discarded garments on the floor by his hand, and tries to disentangle his jeans, which seems to have twisted itself into a knot around some dirty socks and his favorite black button-up overnight.

After a minute of fumbling, his pants finally come free accompanied by a suspicious ripping sound. Derek squints at where the wad of black fabric has flopped to the floor while simultaneously trying to straighten out his pant legs. Then he freezes up and widens his eyes.

There’s a hole in his shirt. There is a  _giant gaping hole_  in his  _favorite shirt_.

He drops his jeans and gingerly picks up the tattered shirt for closer inspection. He now vaguely recalls hearing what might have been several buttons bouncing and scattering on the floor last night, and possibly some ominous tearing sounds too, nearly drowned out by the moans and rhythmic thumping coming from the other side of the thin wall between his room and their neighbors', as he tried to undress as fast as humanly possible to get in bed and bury his head under the pillow. What had at the time probably just been a few missing buttons and a small, still salvageable snag in the stitches at the hem has become an enormous, jagged gash under the unfortunate combination of his drowsy fumbling and the prickly zipper on his jeans.

His mourning is cut short by a weak, erratic squawking coming from somewhere behind him. It takes him a while to identify the source of the sound as the digital alarm clock on his bedside table. The odd noise eventually trails off into faint beeps and then, after one final cheep, dies out completely. He stares blankly for a second at the blank display where the flickering digits have faded out with the sounds before he thinks to check his cell phone for the time.

It’s twenty minutes past the time he usually gets up. He has about fifteen minutes to get out the door or he’s going to miss the bus.

Derek promptly drops everything in his hands, heedless of the thud and ensuing chink of the poor alarm clock meeting its tragic end, and half skids to the bathroom, nearly running into the bathroom door in the process. He takes a one minute shower with ice-cold water, stubs his toe getting out, and narrowly avoids braining himself on the sink when he slips in a puddle of water (he didn’t bother with the shower curtain today).

He finds that he’s out of hair gel as he’s giving his teeth a perfunctory brush. He spits out a mouthful of toothpaste and glances at the bathroom mirror, tugging dejectedly at a tuft of drooping hair. His reflection is pale, eyes bloodshot with dark circles beneath; a smudge of toothpaste clings to one corner of his mouth. He looks hungover, except he didn’t touch a drop alcohol yesterday, because _he was_ _working_.

Derek rubs furiously at his mouth and thinks murderous thoughts about his evil boss who drops last-minute emergency projects on people for fun, his lazy co-workers who dump all the work on him, his crazy ex who chose last night to send him a string of creepy, threatening texts, his very vocal neighbors who screw like rabbits at two in the morning, and most of all his satanic sister…

…who is cooking right now. Crap. Derek thinks he can already smell something burning.

He’s tripping back to his bedroom before he finishes cursing at Laura in his head. He throws on the first pair of underwear he sees and lunges for his jeans still lying in a heap by his bed. He wrestles with it and manages to pull it on after falling over just once, which is pretty good for him, all things considered. He then limps over to his closet, only to find it devoid of all articles of clothing aside from three socks, all different colors; his scratchy Hale family sweater (which he never wears); and a lone [graphic tee](http://www.spreadshirt.com/comic-fat-belly-green-beer-gut-beer-belly-chest-t-shirt-C3376A6530118/vp/6530118T210A196PC23444125PA330X9Y89#/detail/6530118T210A196PC23444125PA330X9Y89) (red with an ugly print of a flabby stomach on the front in bright green; a gift from Erica, as if Derek would ever buy such a hideous, obnoxious thing— _not funny at all_ , okay—and which he also never wears).

Laundry is mostly Laura’s responsibility in their household of two, since Derek often works late at the company computer lab, sometimes even staying the whole night. (In exchange Derek cooks and cleans when he can, and suffers through her various schemes to the best of his abilities, which in his opinion is _more_ than enough payment.) And Laura almost never bothers to put any of the clean laundry back in Derek’s room.

Muttering darkly under his breath, Derek snatches the garishly colored t-shirt and yanks it over his head as he stomps his way out of his room.

-

The kitchen looks like a warzone when he arrives. There’s smoke and strange splatters and misshapen cookware _everywhere_. He slips the instant he sets foot on the tiled floor and knocks hip-first into a cabinet, hitting the still tender four-day-old token of his first ever bus ride spot on. Derek hisses and rubs at the bruise, wincing.

“Whoops, that was probably egg yolk,” Laura turns around with a beatific grin, and then starts cackling as soon as she catches sight of him. “Nice beer belly, little brother. And you let your hair down today, that’s nice.” She _does_ hand over a mug filled with steaming coffee when she’s done sniggering though.

Derek grits his teeth but accepts the proffered beverage, because coffee is coffee. “Thanks. And shut up! It’s _not_ _funny_. You and Erica are idiots. And this is all your fault. I don’t care what you did this time, just give me a shirt, something that’s not so red and green and  _dumb_.”

Laura seems torn between entertained and, strangely, somewhat shifty at that.

Derek takes a sip of the coffee to clear his head before looking at the carnage around him and adds, “I’m not helping you clean this up. How did you get egg yolk all the way ov—oh God, what’s that red stain? And why the hell is my good frying pan bent like—like  _that_? …Okay you are replacing that; it was expensive. And is that the  _colander_?” He keeps finding more things wrong the longer he looks, so he decides to stop looking and spare himself the headache. He turns to glare at his lunatic of a sister instead.

Laura has the nerve to shrug as if she hadn’t just wrecked their kitchen. “You weren’t up at your usual time to do your programmed morning routine, so being a wonderful big sister, I magnanimously decided to make you breakfast!” And then she mumbles something too quickly and quietly for Derek to catch.

Derek rolls his eyes and scowls. “You couldn’t have woken me up? And what was that last bit?”

Laura pouts. “You never let me cook!” And ignoring his, “For a very good reason!”, she slides a plate over the kitchen island to the side where Derek stands fuming silently. It’s filled with the charred remains of what can only be eggs, he supposes. “Scrambled eggs and bacon!” she announces brightly, brandishing a fork in his face until he snatches it away and uses it to prod distractedly at the rock-like scraps, and then she quickly adds, “And I didn’t do the laundry.” 

He freezes mid-poke. “... _What_.”

“I forgot?”

Derek slams his coffee mug down on the counter next to the plate of charcoal, ignoring the slosh of coffee over his hand, which splatters a little over his shirt. “Not even an undershirt? What am I supposed to wear to work then?”

“Just wear what you are wearing now! Throw you suit jacket on over it if it makes you feel better. You’ll fit right in, Dee. For once.”

“ _We have a dress code_.”

“Which is not strictly enforced in your department. I’ve seen your coworkers. I know for a fact none of them wear suits to work.”

“I hate this shirt,” Derek says petulantly, slamming his mug down a second time just to make a point. The cup handle promptly snaps off.

“Wow, I hate to say this again, but you have anger management issues, baby bro. You want some superglue? It’s your favorite mug, right?

It was. It was a gift from his mother. Derek stares dumbly at the now handle-less bright orange mug on the counter. He shakes himself and checks his phone again. “I don’t have time for this. I’m going to miss my bus.”

“Aww, you’re not gonna eat your eggs? Here, I made grilled cheese sandwiches too! You can take them with you.” Laura shoves some blackened squares of bread into his hand.

They are only a little better than charcoal, and the cheese inside is probably going to break his teeth, but he knows Laura uses up everything single scrap of food they have when she cooks, so this is probably the best he’s going to get, so he takes them.

Laura looks at him shrewdly. “Why are you so eager to take the bus all of a sudden? You hate buses. I can drive you if you wait a bit.”

“No,” he says tersely around the bitter tasting sandwich jammed in his mouth and buttons up his jacket over his now coffee-stained t-shirt. Well, now that he’s dressed for work, more or less, he has roughly seven minutes to get to the bus stop, which should be just enough. He grabs his laptop bag. “I’m leaving. Try not to break anything else.”

Laura scoffs but keeps looking at him with a calculating expression. Derek ignores her and slams the door shut.

-

He’s taken not two steps toward the elevator when the door across the hall opens and the main reasons he barely got four hours of sleep last night step out, one after the other. He glares his wordless accusations at them but quickly regrets it when the young woman makes eye contact and waves at him cheerfully.

“Morning, Derek!” She drags her husband toward the elevator as well, stopping right next to Derek, evidently intent on starting an excruciating round of pointless small talk.

Derek gives her a curt nod, then turns to stare despondently at the slowly ticking floor number of the elevator. He refuses to acknowledge their names, which he'd only learned last night, and which he would've happily gone on not knowing.

“You look tired, man,” the guy remarks languidly after sparing him a glance, and immediately returns his attention to his wife, wrapping an arm around her waist, leading her onto the elevator when the doors ping open at last.

Derek follows. “I was kept up late,” he says drily and throws in a glower for good measure.

“Aww, that’s too bad… O-oh. _Oh_! Um, you heard—?” She blushes prettily and giggles, punching her husband lightly on the shoulder. “ _You_ are the loud one. Apologize!” She tries to leer but only manages an awkward chuckle. She pinches her husband’s nose when he laughs at her, and he rolls his eyes and tickles her with the hand resting on her hip in retaliation.

Derek watches the scene of domestic bliss unfolding before him and wants to stab his eyes out. He turns his stare to the toes of his shoes instead as a tickle-fight commences between the couple, and begins contemplating the sorry state of his love life. The closest he’s gotten to getting laid in over two years is getting pseudo-groped by some guy on a bus three days in a row. The most pathetic part is, he’s actually looking forward to their fourth grope-and-depart session right now.

The elevator mercifully pings to a stop on the ground floor before his exhausted brain can form any more maudlin thoughts. He makes to get away but the woman stops him with a hand on his elbow, her other hand hooked around one of her husband’s belt hoops.

“A-ah, Derek, sorry, we got distracted just now. We really should apologize, though, for last night,” she bites her bottom lip and jabs the guy in the side. “We’ll buy you coffee?”

Derek ducks his head and mumbles something about being late for work.

“Uh, okay, yeah, seriously though, sorry about keeping you up, man. We’ll… _try_ to keep it down next time?” The guy shrugs, grinning helplessly.

The woman hides a smile behind her hand. “Yeah. We’ll buy you some earplugs tomorrow. And the offer for coffee still stands, just let us know! Have a nice day!”

Derek inclines his head and can’t get out of there quickly enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just in case I somehow screwed up the link in the text, here's Derek's t-shirt: <http://www.spreadshirt.com/comic-fat-belly-green-beer-gut-beer-belly-chest-t-shirt-C3376A6530118/vp/6530118T210A196PC23444125PA330X9Y89#/detail/6530118T210A196PC23444125PA330X9Y89>


	2. Stiles to the Rescue!

Derek is doing a slow jog and cursing his stiff new shoes when he spots his bus pulling over at the stop over half a block away. He makes a frantic dash for it, and has just twenty yards to go when the bus lurches and starts pulling away. He wants to yell, to chase after it until it stops, but his tired feet are already slowing down. So it’s going to be _that_ kind of day.

He’s dragging his feet toward the stop, already anticipating a long, tedious, and groping-free bus ride ahead of him and thinking longingly of his Camaro still at the garage. Boyd the mechanic mocked Derek for _hours_ on Tuesday evening for breaking some contraption or another in his attempt to fix the car on his own. If Derek casually let slip later that he could be persuaded to pay for additional maintenance, well, he's due for a routine checkup in a couple of (read: seven) months anyway, might as well, right? And asking Boyd to be thorough and to take his time was just him being considerate, though it’s coming back to bite him on the ass now.

He looks up when he hears a series of loud honking and notices the bus slowing to a stop in the middle of the street. He gapes at it uncertainly, not sure what happened, but then he sees the door open and a head with a distinctive buzzcut poke out. Stiles.

“Dude, what are you waiting for? A written invitation? Bob is only willing to wait for so long! C’mon!”

Derek snaps out of his daze and runs.

-

Derek gets his own welcome party when he finally scrambles aboard the bus. Over half of the other passengers offer him some form of greeting, though a few of them are scowling, likely in irritation for the holdup. Even Bob the driver deigns to roll his eyes at him before he yanks the door shut and wrenches at the gearshift.

Stiles is overjoyed, his grin so wide it’s threatening to split his face in half. “Dude! Who’s awesome and saved your ass again? Me!” he crows. “Ready to roll? Hold on tight!” he calls over the rev of the engine, a steadying hand warm on Derek’s shoulder.

Derek huffs out half a laugh and grabs hold of the handrail nearby, preparing for the bumpy ride. He doesn’t say anything about the hand on his shoulder, which is currently massaging his tense muscles and rubbing idle circles into the back of his neck. Derek can feel himself relaxing in increments, even though the bus is starting its rocky journey down the street.

It’s been three days and three bumpy bus rides since their first meeting. Derek is slowly getting the hang of riding on buses driven by crazy people. He only occasionally needs a hand to hold him up now, and he didn’t fall once after Stiles got off at his stop the day before. And he tells Stiles so.

Stiles tries to feign hurt and heartbreak, but his grin is too wide for the act to be convincing. “Aww, you're just going to discard me like damaged goods after you used me as a personal handrail so shamelessly for _three whole days_? Harsh,” he sniffles and pouts, mock affronted.

Derek snorts and raises an eyebrow at him. Stiles obviously takes this as a challenge and turns to begin teasing Bob for getting soft, which earns him and everyone else a particularly violent swivel at the next turn. Bob cackles vindictively as everyone scrambles to remain upright. Derek gives Stiles a look as Stiles sways and clutches his shoulder a little too hard.

“Never mind, you made your point, Bob,” Stiles sulks a little but recovers soon enough as he presses into Derek’s side with one of Bob’s signature crazy swerves. “So, you look all rumpled. Late night?” he says in a low voice, right into Derek’s left ear. He’s smirking when Derek turns to look at him.

“Yes.” Derek says shortly, barely suppressing a shiver as the warm gust of Stiles’s breath brushes the sensitive skin behind his ear.

“Oh? Hot date?” Stiles’s smirk is still teasing and it might be wishful thinking on his part, but Derek thinks his shoulders droop slightly, and he _possibly_ pulls away a little when the bus makes another dramatic turn.

“Work.” Derek shrugs and clutches harder at the handrail, hoping Stiles will press close again.

“Oh! That sucks, man.” Stiles brightens and pats his back, giving the back of his neck a commiserating squeeze. He settles back in next to Derek and bumps their shoulders together companionably. Derek scoots over a little so they can share a handrail.

They share a moment of comfortable silence, arms pressed together with the constant rocking and jolting of the bus, but Stiles never stays quiet for long. He starts rambling about an interesting article about sea otters he was reading on the internet last night, but then his eyes snap to Derek’s hair and he stops. Derek cringes internally.

“Cute hair,” Stiles smirks and makes a show of giving Derek a thorough once-over, humming thoughtfully all the while, eyebrows dancing on his forehead. “Yup. It’s very endearingly floppy, and so at odds with the mountain man scruff thing you got going on, though the wild, bloodshot eyes might be a tad too much. And wow, color! Is that a _t-shirt_ under your suit? You actually mix-and-matched? I’m impressed,” Stiles declares with a brisk nod.

Derek makes a face and shoves him half-heartedly. “Shut it. This is my sister’s fault. And I didn’t buy this stupid shirt. It’s not funny, okay?”

“Your sister sounds awesome. I feel like we would be the best of friends if we ever meet.” Stiles pauses. “Wait, what’s not funny? _Ooh_.” His eyes zoom in on Derek’s t-shirt and he starts poking at his suit jacket straight away. He catches sight of the green print hidden underneath before Derek can bat his hand away. He bursts out laughing. “Oh my God, this—and your _face_!” he gasps between fits of giggles. How he manages to keep his balance on the lurching bus while laughing until he’s close to tears will forever be a mystery to Derek. “I have a [similar shirt](http://www.spreadshirt.com/ripped-muscles-green-six-pack-chest-t-shirt-C3376A6533721),” he continues with a wheeze, “only with a six-pack instead of a beer belly. Oh man, we should totally wear them together sometime.”

“Not. _Funny_.” Derek knocks Stiles lightly with his laptop bag in protest, but he knows he’s blushing, both from mortification and from the implication that they’ll be seeing more of each other.

“It _really_ is, man. I like it though!” Stiles finally calms down to just occasional chuckles. He smiles fondly at Derek’s offended look. “I’m serious! I like it.” He does look pretty serious, though the corners of his mouth keep twitching upwards.

Derek ducks his head to hide a smile and leans into Stiles the next time Bob slams on the breaks. He feels Stiles lean into contact and press even closer as the bus picks up speed again.

They not-cuddle like this for a while, just making idle conversation, and Stiles’s face keeps ending up shoved into Derek’s neck every time the bus wobbles. “Mm, you smell like coffee. And charcoal,” he says suddenly and leans in, resting his chin on top of Derek’s shoulder, sniffing appreciatively.

Derek doesn’t know what to say to that, and Stiles’s beaming face, so close to his own, is making him feel warm all over. So he tries to find a new topic. “My neighbors kept me up last night having loud, rowdy sex.”

Derek wants to slap himself for blurting out such an awkward thing.

Stiles bites his lower lip, visibly straining not to burst out laughing again. “Um, that must have sucked for you.” He purses his lips and then smirks. “Oh, you know what? _You_ should totally have some loud, rowdy sex yourself as revenge.”

Derek sputters and blushes furiously.

Stiles tilts his head, a mischievous glint in his eyes, and leans in to whisper in Derek’s ear, “I can help you with that if you want.” He then glides past Derek, smacking his ass playfully on the way, and dances away toward the door, cackling.

Derek is frozen on the spot and can only stare after him, face burning, mouth hanging open, completely flabbergasted. He doesn’t even notice that they are almost at Stiles’s stop, so when the bus jerks to a sudden halt he was utterly unprepared and lands on his ass in an ungraceful heap.

Stiles punches the air and hoots triumphantly as he hops down onto the pavement. “You owe me one, Bob!”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll bring cupcakes for you and Bambi on Monday, Bilinski. Now pay up, suckers!” Derek watches stupidly as Bob the driver gleefully accepts a couple of bills from several of the other passengers. He has just gotten back to his feet when he hears Stiles shout his name.

“Hey Derek, I meant what I said just now. Check you back pocket!” He’s still grinning and waving when the bus door slams shut again. “Bye! Don’t forget to hold onto the handrail!”

Derek finds a bright yellow sticky note tucked in the pocket of his jeans, a phone number scribbled on with a winking smiley face next to it.

The bus shudders into motion, and with a well-timed maneuver executed by Bob, Derek is thrown off balance again. He hangs onto the handrail for dear life, and when he looks up, Stiles is doing a silly dance on the sidewalk. Derek buries his face in one hand, but he can’t wipe the silly smile off his face, however hard he tries.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's Stiles's t-shirt: <http://www.spreadshirt.com/ripped-muscles-green-six-pack-chest-t-shirt-C3376A6533721>
> 
> Originally I was planning to have Derek wear this because I imagined he would have a secret soft spot for the Hulk, but then I scrolled down the page and saw the beer belly one and I just _had_ to make him wear _that_.

**Author's Note:**

> So this turned out a lot longer than I had planned. (I bet no one is surprised.) I kind of got distracted trying to make Derek's day as horrid as I could for the nefarious purpose of cheering myself up. Oops.
> 
> Sadly I wasn't able to finish this in time for last week's Failwolf Friday, but Derek's failtastic life is good any day of the week, am I right? Right.
> 
> Beta credit to the wonderful [emptyword](http://archiveofourown.org/users/emptyword).
> 
> Thanks for reading! ♥

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [T'Shirt Full of Chemistry](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9099928) by [Museohmuse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Museohmuse/pseuds/Museohmuse)




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